


Suffer a Sea Change

by AMarguerite



Series: Something Rich and Strange [1]
Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 21:06:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5943103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing ever ruffles Spuddy-- except when Ralph helps him with the choreography of the duel in "Hamlet." Ralph makes one very different choice at school as a result.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Suffer a Sea Change

**Author's Note:**

> I was re-reading 'The Charioteer' and one of Ralph's sadder bits of backstory struck me: "I'd had rather a sickener of the other side. Once people know about you at sea, they want you to be too obliging, and you never get away from it. It's not so good in peacetime starting below decks with the wrong accent and so on. I didn't want to give them anything on me." I was curious as to what might have happened if Ralph had this kind of implied experience before he was done with school. Hence this AU. My knowledge of Oxbridge entrance exams comes from 'The History Boys' so apologies if it wasn't the policy in the 30s to go up to Cambridge or Oxford for an in-person interview at your chosen college.

“Come along, come along Odell. You’re supposed to know the foil’s poisoned: for the Lord’s sake fence as if you cared whether you get hit or not.”

Later, Ralph was to wonder what would have happened if Odell’s foil had not sprung wildly out of his hand, the way innuendos had a distressing tendency to spring wildly from Odell’s lips. But, in the moment, he only cursed the way he'd learnt to on the trawler and bawled, “Hi, Odell! Is that a snake or a sword?” while willing himself not to examine his grazed knuckles, from where the foil had slipped under Ralph’s guard.

Odell’s face was drained of all color, making his hair seem flaming red. “I'm so- I'm so very sorry Lanyon!”

“Dip your hand in butter or something? Think it requisite for swordplay?” Then before Odell could clearly release the off-color joke this inspired, Hazell was shrieking and making a fuss. Ralph turned to glare at him. The incipient feelings of tenderness, that sensation of meaningful silences, were too newly formed to survive this flash of irritation without withering somewhat.

“He’s bleeding!” Hazell bleated. “Lanyon’s bleeding!”

And then- Christ Almighty- Hazell fainted.

Or pretended to faint.

Ralph checked Odell’s expression before deciding one way or another. Odell had never learnt to hide what he was thinking, and, as this had gained him an enjoyable reputation as a forthright and honest fellow, a leader of public opinion, this was unlikely to ever change. Odell’s expression had faded from overwhelming horror and remorse to the shock and offended sensibilities of an Athenian having heard that Alcibiades had defected to Sparta. Odell was two seconds away from shouting, “Bad form!”

“He's faking it, the twerp,” Ralph said, contemptuously. “One of you, Carter- pull him out of the way. Ophelia’s not even supposed to be on the stage now. Odell--”

“Surely you should get that seen to?” Odell asked.

“What, join Hugh in the sicker and leave you to kill off the rest of the cast? That's Hamlet’s job.”

There followed a polite titter of laughter from the rest assembled onstage and in the wings. Ralph knew he was being hard on Odell for no other reason than the fact that he was keyed up. The adrenaline of injury, he supposed, mixed with that sense of eager anticipation he always felt before a bout. He had been injured much worse before, in bouts with Hugh, or in childhood exploration, or at sea. He distinctly remembered much bloodier instances on the trawler-- certain scenes he did not like very much to remember-- and forced himself to focus on Odell. “Pick up the foil, Odell. Let’s start with the basics. Laertes is supposed to have been at continual practice.”

Odell was at his best when he was blithely, almost sublimely unselfconscious. If he was not at his worst today, he was approaching it. Nothing Ralph said was being implemented. Heard, yes. Understood, no.

“What is it Odell?” asked Ralph, a little impatiently. “D’you need me to show you again?”

“Yes, Lanyon, if you please.”

Ralph demonstrated, made Odell try to imitate him, and then, when that inevitably failed, began physically correcting Odell’s stance and grip. Odell’s skin felt slightly hot with embarrassment, but he took the corrections well, and his form improved each time Ralph touched him.

“There now,” said Ralph, when Odell managed a proper lunge. “He can be taught! You want to watch the wrist--” tapping it “--and the back leg here.” He nudged Odell’s left foot with his own. “Keep your foot still when you’re lunging. The leg should be doing the work. Let’s see it again.”

“Yes, Lanyon,” said Odell, slightly out of breath.

Even taking into account the awkward gracelessness of a self-conscious fifteen-year-old, there was something arresting about Odell’s movements. Ralph realized he was staring and covered it up with his first words to praise to Odell all day: “Very well done, Odell. I can see the improvement already.”

Odell looked up at him, but not with the pure hero worship that Ralph had always found flattering and so strangely, intensely gratifying he was always standing taller when Odell was near. There was something new and subtle in this admiring look, half-glimpsed, before Odell himself became conscious of it, and flushed to the red roots of his hair.

“Oh,” thought Ralph, with a sudden sensation of vertigo. “This is why I've been such a bastard to him today.”

He had often looked around, after his experiences on the trawler, and thought, ‘who can I be as sure of as myself?’ and come up blank. Hazell was unmistakable. All the others were licking at the ground for salt, like cattle. He’d thought Odell, L.P. to be one of the latter. But it was a well worn axiom, a sort of school cultural constant, that nothing ever ruffled Spuddy. And now Spuddy was distinctly ruffled.

Ralph was conscious of a hope as sudden and painful as a stab to the solar plexus. He did not know how to manage it except to become brisk. “Right. That’s much better, Odell. I’ll work on it with you until Hugh’s out of the sicker, if _you_ work on holding your weapon properly.” He risked a more gentle, deliberate touch-- one hand to Odel’’s forearm, the other cupping Odell’s elbow-- with an absurd feeling of a scientist testing his results again, to be sure of his conclusion. “Keep this horizontal. The foil should look like an extension of your arm. It won’t fly out of your hand if your wrist....” A spirit of almost suicidal daring was upon him; he wrapped his fingers around Odell’s wrist and gently turned it. Odell’s pulse was rapid and erratic beneath his fingertips. “Good. Better. Remember how this feels.”

“Yes, Lanyon,” Odell said, voice cracking a little. Odell kept his eyes firmly on his foil. Ralph wondered if Odell even knew about himself at that point, if it ever occurred to him to question or guess. There was a mix of ignorance and innocence about Odell that was at times difficult to interpret.

“Good enough for now,” said Ralph, unable to keep himself from clapping Odell on the shoulder. “Right. Where’s Hamlet?”

When pressed, later, by a Hugh convinced that the whole rehearsal would be a disaster without him, Ralph couldn’t give any very detailed account of how he had coached Hamlet (who, thank God, knew enough about fencing not to need physical correction), or what reactions he told Claudius and Gertrude to have, or where he’d scattered the rest of the court, to be out of the way of the duel. He only remembered the surging pulse beneath his fingertips, and Odell’s look of soul-deep confusion while watching Hamlet’s part of the duel from the audience.

Hazell noticed of course. Hazell noticed everything that meant he was not the focus of Ralph’s waking (and certainly dreaming) hours. And he came up to Ralph in the hall, after the rehearsal, looking like something Dostoievsky had dreamt up while feeling particularly sorry for himself. “How awful it was, seeing you hurt!”

Ralph had his sentence prepared in his head, as if reciting a translation for class, but he saw, if he said it with a gentle gruffness, Hazell’s sense of injury would melt away like drips of candlewax. And so Ralph said, coolly, coldly, in the tones he’d learned from the captain of the trawler, “For the Lord’s sake, toughen up a bit, Hazell. It’s only blood, and not very much of it at that.”

Hazell drew back as if slapped. “But it’s all--”

Ralph flexed his injured hand. “It’s all _what_ , Hazell? I’ve worked it out with Green--” he hadn’t, but no matter; the fifth-formers always leapt at his suggestions for action with a touchingly implicit confidence “--and he’ll be helping you on with your algebra. None of these fainting spells with him. He hasn’t the patience I do.”

“You hardly had any patience at all,” Hazell protested.

“Exactly,” said Ralph, and took the stairs up to the sicker two at a time.

***

The next day’s visit to the sicker was unpleasant. Ralph knew himself to be in a bitchy mood, and the meeting with Jeepers had rendered his patience, already bordering on non-existent, into a thing of distant myth.

“Hazell went sobbing to Jeepers,” Ralph said shortly, when Hugh looked up from his comic and asked why he was in such a pet, “because he _fainted_ yesterday and I wouldn’t make anyone take him to the Matron. You’ll have noted that no one volunteered to take him.”

Hugh said, with his usual habit of seizing on the wrong part of a complaint, “He’s a wretched little misfit, Ralph, the worst drip this House- even this school- has seen in years. Of course no one would volunteer. You could probably have made Odell do it. He’s a soft touch, especially when you ask him to do things.”

This was too tender a point. Ralph said, “Rot. You should have seen how incredulous Odell looked when Hazell swooned, like some late Victorian maiden. It was all a show.”

“Perfect casting on my part, then, having him as Ophelia,” said Hugh, inclined to return to his comic. At Ralph’s annoyed look, he reluctantly put it aside. “What did old Jeepers have to say about it?”

“He took a high moralistic tone about what, as Head Prefect, I ought to have done when one of the younger boys was unwell, questioned my sense of responsibility and judgment. That sort of rot.”

Hugh objected, “He can’t have realized that Hazell was faking.”

“Or that if I had sent Hazell to Matron, someone would have jumped Hazell in the bogs the next day.”

“I miss old Stuart,” said Hugh, wistfully. Then, with the newly acquired ability to cajole people out of moods-- gained from having spent most of the fall surrounded by a pack of histrionic younger boys imagining themselves actors-- he added, “It’s a good thing they made you Head. I shudder to think what would have happened if they had made Chapman, or Gillett.”

Ralph did not wish to be soothed by the praise, but he was, and the hoarse, wheedling tone in which Hugh had said it. “Our house is in a wretched state.”

“You'd better get to work on the next round of head prefects,” Hugh continued on, in the same tone, and in the same manner. While drunk, Hugh had the irritating propensity to insist that Lanyon could not be happy unless he was interfering in the life of someone or other. While sober, he did not say it aloud, but it was always clearly the impetus behind any advice he bothered to give Ralph. “Keep them from falling rank and file behind Jeepers. Who do you think for next year?”

“Somers after me, I think,” said Ralph. “Then Jones II. I can’t think who after him.”

“Odell?” suggested Hugh.

Ralph looked his surprise.

“Well, who else could it be, besides Odell?” asked Hugh. “He’s got the disposition for it. Nothing ever ruffles Spuddy.”

“What?” Ralph tried quickly to turn his sudden sweep of emotion at the old axiom into something more appropriate. “If he leads as well as he fences, this House might as well be disbanded entirely.”

Hugh displayed the look which Ralph had always found less than flattering; the air of almost dumb relief that Lanyon Had Found a Project, Thank God. “He responds very well to your instruction, you know.” Then, in a tone that aimed at subtlety, even though it fell far short: “Better than that twerp Hazell.”

Ralph took Hugh’s comic and threw it at him.

***

Ralph was later grateful to Hugh, though he could never bring himself to admit it unless drifting in or out of sleep. He had a ready excuse for watching Odell, and by altering his manner a little with Somers and Jones II, had evidence to support his white lie. ‘Only watching Odell to make sure this house hangs together when I’m at Cambridge, sir,’ he practiced in his head. But he never had reason to speak it aloud.

Jeepers was on some Victorian kick about the dangers of self-abuse and as long as Ralph sat stoically through a list of things disproved by the combined efforts of Freud and modern science, he did not have to engage. And if Jeepers had suspicions about what Ralph termed in his head, ‘hanging offenses,’ they were centered on Hazell.

It was not easy to detach Hazell, who had developed a quite rational jealousy of Odell. Ralph had to fling fifth formers and other prefects into the breach, trying to wall it up with the English dead. Hazell worked through the patience of every single one, still harping on Odell’s performance as Laertes, to the point where even Carter-- by no means an intelligent or observant boy-- began joking obviously with Odell and Harris that Hazell should be sent to one of those free love schools where people’s complexes were on the syllabus, instead of Shakespeare and algebra.

Odell was blithely ignorant. He was expected to get his School colors for swimming, he was not expected to act again after his very nice Laertes had a very nice and very unconvincing death, his mother was _not_ going to marry a retired colonel back home, he was bursting with pride that Lanyon thought he was prefect material, and he had no idea, as of yet, that he _wasn't_ a simple and uncomplicated individual. Odell had never been happier.

It was unclear to Ralph whether or not he, R.R. Lanyon, Head Prefect, Product of a Christian Home, and Unquestionable Homosexual, was actually happy. He swung regularly from agony to ecstasy like an opium-addled Romantic convinced he was a pendulum. There were times with Odell that he felt himself elevated almost to irrationality. In the privacy of the prefect’s study, with an almost wild desperation, Lanyon dissected to nothingness the signs and signals that Odell did not seem to realize he had made. Why was it in public schools that all manner of desire for one's own sex could be safely spoken aloud as a joke? Odell had no sense of proportion with innuendo. It was impossible to tell whether he was led astray with the desire to be funny, or if he meant those lingering looks or half-flirtatious jokes about sublimation.

Ralph almost regretted casting away a known quantity like Hazell. Often, as Ralph lay wakeful in bed, the first few minutes after lights out, when his body resisted the institutional demand for rest, he would press his forearm over his eyes and think, ‘Realizing he's queer would be the least of Hazell’s problems. It would be the worst of them for Spud.’ He always now called Odell ‘Spud’ in his head. He had ever since they went for a walk together to town on some pretext that only Odell could have accepted without question. Odell was at first nervous, unsure if he could fill the silence stretching before them, like the few short miles to town. But in the end they were both so curious about each other that they only stopped talking because when they got back to school, one of the newer drips, Whittier, seemed to have both appendicitis and a deathly allergy to inconveniencing either the prefects or the Matron.

“It’s nothing but bullheadedness not to go up to the sicker and get it sorted out,” Ralph had said briskly. “Come along Whittier. If it isn’t as bad as all that, as you keep saying, you’ll be given a tab of Alka-Seltzer and be back before prep’s over.”

The threat of the hospital banished, Whittier had proven to be more amenable.

Odell had hung back, a little uncertain.

“Come along Odell,” Ralph had said, glad of the excuse. “This’ll be your duty in a few years’ time. Come along and see if you’re up to it.”

Odell was strikingly good looking when he smiled. Ralph was, for some five seconds, in terrific danger of forgetting where he was going and what he was supposed to do when he got there.

But, having felt the danger of this, Ralph started shoring himself up, calling Jones II to help him pin up notices on the board, having serious talks before the fire in the head prefect’s study with Somers. Neither of them responded as gratifyingly as Odell-- not that he would have wanted anyone but Spuddy to smile at him that way, thought Ralph, with a sweep of maudlin, hopeless Romanticism-- but they were eager to live up to his expectations, as puff-breasted as pigeons knowing that Lanyon Trusted Them.   

For about a week, he was paranoid about this method of defense. He watched Somers and Jones II, and then ventured a pat on the shoulder and a touch on the elbow apiece. But neither of them blushed as Odell had. Ralph hadn’t expect them to drop pins, as he had learned to do, or to just fling them madly in the air in a street urchin sort of way, as Odell was wont to do, but he suspected they might try something, with him, or with each other, or with a friend, or with one of the younger boys, for lack of women. Somers and Jones II clearly liked bossing about the other students but there ended their interest.

Hugh, unexpectedly, held the key to that particular closet.

“Good God Lanyon,” he said, when he and Ralph had snuck off to the village pub (a privilege not technically allowed to the Oxbridge candidates, for all that tradition insisted it was), “if you hadn’t worked on the trawler during the summer hols, you’d be bloody insufferable.”

“What?” asked Ralph. Mention of the trawler still pulled at the badly knit scar of his first real understanding of his own nature.

“The twerps treat you like you just stepped out of a boy’s adventure novel,” said Hugh. “I’m glad you realized how unpleasant that sort of adventuring really is, you’d be impossible to live with if you hadn’t.” Ralph forbore to mention he had accepted a place in a projected expedition to the Arctic.

There then followed a period of gin-inspired self-congratulation on hitting upon the scheme of getting Ralph to train up Odell et all, but Ralph had stopped paying attention. He had the horrible thought that Odell might be queer, but just might not feel more than hero-worship for the Head Prefect.

To test this, Ralph introduced the subject of his time in the trawler, the next time he and Odell were alone together.

Odell was fascinated, as he had never been out of England, but seemed less interested in Ralph’s exploits than his impressions.

“Did you have any trouble getting along with the crew?” asked Odell, when Ralph had exhausted the wonders of the Blue Lagoon.

He felt an uncomfortable truth stuck in the back of his throat: when people knew about you at sea, trapped as you were, in the same place with the same people for weeks at a time, they wanted you to be too obliging-- too much, and too often-- and you could never get away from it. Ralph had only learned this on the way back to England, and thankfully not before, but sometimes he still sat up at nights, using Plato as a palliative, and wishing for rum instead.

“I had the wrong accent to be working belowdecks,” was all Ralph said. “Kept me from being too well liked by the crew. But I liked the work.”

“D’you think you’ll go to the RNVR, then?”

“The Royal Geological Society,” said Ralph.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Odell admitted, and in his air and expression there was a touching friendliness-- not as if he were begging his hero for advice, but if he was asking a mate of his what topic he’d picked for the essay on _Hamlet_. “I’m to sit for Oxford. Classics, I think. I like classics.”

“It’s a good fit for you,” said Ralph.

“What is?”

“Oxford. Classics. Both.”

“Are you sitting for Oxford, too?” asked Odell, hopefully.

“Cambridge.”

Odell’s expression was so downcast Ralph thought, ‘There’s something in this.’ But what exactly, he still could not say.

***

Somers was a good-natured, conscientious fellow. He came often to Ralph for advice, for he had not yet learnt the balance between compassion and discipline. Ralph could not say he did either, but he’d had more experience of leadership and could walk him through some of the more common mistakes.

“I just... I don’t know if I can beat the twerps,” Somers admitted, staring at the fine spring morning outside the window.

“Your people Quakers or something?” asked Ralph, impatiently. “Of course you can give any twerp six of the best.”

“One feels so awfully sorry for them. Like puppies.”

“Like _puppies_? Don’t you discipline your dogs if they bite or rip up your slippers?”

“Yes but--”

“Look, next time there’s a punishment to be administered, you’ll do half of it. You’ll watch me, and then follow. There’s a way of doing it to teach them a lesson without injuring them.”

Somers was not exactly pleased with this idea, but he could not refuse Ralph, particularly when Ralph was clearly doing him a favor to make him a good Head. He tried to speak his way out of it, but Ralph gave him a straight look. Somers wilted. He was a painstakingly conscientious fellow. He would not derelict his duty. And, anyways, Hazell came sniffling up to the prefect’s study before Somers could even attempt an escape.

Ralph was surprised. Hazell tended to avoid anything that could get him outright disciplined. Jones II had once, in a rare bout of confidence, had told Ralph that everyone let Hazell get away with murder because no one wanted to deal with him. And, Ralph realized, as Hazell crept into the study, muttering about how the other boys were all against him, everyone in the House had picked up that Lanyon Didn’t Want to Be Bothered With Hazell and had set out to obey even that implicit instruction.

Damn Hugh for always being insufferably right.

“Lanyon-- please Lanyon,” said Hazell, looking up soulfully at him. “I’m not in the wrong.”

“Then why were you sent up to my study?” asked Ralph, stern.

General disruptive behavior, it seemed.

“Who sent you?”

It was like extracting a tooth, to discover it was Jeepers.

Was this vengeance for being unhelpful with the so-called masturbation epidemic, Ralph wondered? An attempt to force the Head of the House to physically combat immorality? It might have just as easily been laziness or fastidiousness. Jeepers seemed the sort to wish to keep his hands clean of any interaction with a boy with the wrong inclinations. But, then again, Jeepers had never managed to wrest control of the house away from Ralph, for all that it was nearing the end of the year. It might be a last ditch effort to cast Ralph on one side of the unpalatable Holy War for good. Or for evil. Ralph was never sure if Jeepers thought him merely insufferable for having the loyalty of the boys, or if Jeepers had picked up on--

God, the thought was too ghastly for words.   

“Six of the best,” said Ralph, grabbing the carpet slipper. “Since you say you’re not in the wrong, Somers here will give you half. He’s new to the duty and may go easy on you. Somers, shut the door. Hazell, bend over.”

Hazell burst into tears.

“None of this cissy stuff,” Ralph found himself saying. “Come on, take your beating like the other boys. Mr. Jepson’s word is final. For the Lord’s sake, bend over!” He had nearly to force Hazell over the edge of the prefect’s desk. Somers’s mutterings about puppies inspired him to seize Hazell by the scruff to hold him down. Hazell gave a little hiccup of surprise.

In the momentary calm, Ralph said, hurriedly, “Three from me, three from Somers. Count.”

“One,” squeaked Hazell. “Two.” Then, in a very different voice, he breathed, “Three.”

Ralph handed the slipper over to Somers, feeling as paranoid as Jeepers must every day of his life. He couldn’t-- Hazell couldn’t--

“Er, count,” said Somers.

“Four,” said Hazell dreamily. “Five. _Oh_. Six.”

Somers was looking at Ralph in unspeakable bewilderment. Ralph could not hide his own shock and incredulity. It _was_ a bloody set-up from Jeepers. What the hell was he supposed to do? Hazell was standing up now, the evidence of his feelings about the slippering clearly evident.

“The hell,” was all Ralph could manage. “Somers, grab his arm. Something’s clearly wrong with Hazell. Take him to the sicker.”

Hazell looked confused. “But I don’t--”

“Look, Hazell,” said Somers, bright red, “it-- it doesn’t take much, at your age, for, er... anything. To make you react... but it’s er. Look, old chap. This isn’t... yes... maybe... here, take this magazine of Lanyon’s and put it-- yes, hold it there. In front of your trousers. There you are. Confusing time of life, this. The... er. To the sicker.”

Ralph said nothing. He felt the shadow of the sword above him. He was heartily glad to pass on the problem to Matron. What the devil she could do in response to a problem clearly psychological Ralph did not know, but Jeepers could not get him for this.

Later on, Ralph stood Hugh a drink, “for being right, even if you are an insufferable ass.” Hazell was not, perhaps, a known quantity after all.

***

Jeepers still won. Ralph found himself thoroughly outmaneuvered. He was not given the sack-- he couldn’t have, with Somers there, and Somer’s beating provoking the final explosion, as it were-- but Somers categorically refused to ever beat another boy again and would not be Head Prefect next year. Ralph, in his terror of being found out for other psychological defects, had to assume what he termed his Plymouth Brethren look and act more censoriously than he would have done otherwise.

Neither Ralph nor Somers said anything about what happened-- Ralph out of a desperate, almost animalistic sense of self-preservation, and Somers out of unconquerable embarrassment-- but somehow it got out. Jones II was largely inclined to suspect Hazell himself. Ralph outwardly acted disapproving but thought, ‘What a mess!’ and could not distinguish within himself whether his sense of having narrowly got away was pity for Hazell, or relief that Hazell’s psychology was so much more interesting to Jeepers than his own.  

It began to dawn on Ralph how wrong it would have been to act on his initial attraction to Hazell at the beginning of the year. Yes, being queer was the least of Hazell’s quite remarkable collection of complexes, but that didn’t mean Hazell should have been made to act on it. And, thought Raph, almost feeling the first mate’s hand over his mouth, and the swaying dampness in the brig of the trawler, it wasn’t like Hazell could have refused him. It would have been a gross abuse of privilege.   

It grew so uncomfortable that Hazell’s people took him away. Jeepers was satisfied. He’d found a scandal, and found one that had ruined the Head Prefect’s obvious plans to mould the House to his ethos. Jeepers also now had the excuse to subject all the schoolboys to a series of “little talks” that bewildered all the younger, and embarrassed or entertained the older. The Cert. crowd, released from the rigours of Shakespeare, had a fine time coming with a variety of insulting skits mocking Jeepers’s little talks. Ralph always pretended to be swotting away for Cambridge up in the prefect’s study, the way that eighteenth century doctors always turned away from duels so as to have plausible deniability.

Discipline broke down, somewhat, in the face of this now explicit war against Jeepers. Ralph had a faction of other students, of all forms and classes. It was natural to welcome the prefects to his study, so that they might also, honestly say they had not seen any skits, but it was not the done thing to have members of lower forms in his room for any reason but discipline. And yet Jones II and Odell were pretty constantly in the prefect’s study.

No one ever thought to close the windows, so thoughtfully placed above the common room, so the Head could always keep an eye on the house. There was no barrier to keep from hearing the lower forms cribbing jokes from Terence and trying, with various degrees of success, to capture Jeeper’s affect and accents. When one of Ralph's faction started sniggering into their problem sets or crib sheets, it was usually Odell’s job to say, “Something _funny_ , Jones?” the way Jeepers did in assembly, and the whole room would be biting their knuckles or going into hysterics over French grammatical structures.  

If Odell always took the spot on the floor by Ralph’s favorite chair, the fact when unremarked upon, except as a good precautionary measure. Lanyon could always pull Spuddy back from saying something truly over the line.

***

For the rest of the term, Ralph was too paranoid to do anything. He convinced himself that he was merely good friends with Spuddy. Good old Spuddy, who would pull the House together the way Ralph thought right. It was natural to stay close to Spuddy when Somers had failed him, and Jones II was nearabouts as perfect a prefect as could be got from the ranks of the lower middle classes. Ralph’s little faction saw nothing in it, or at least, pretended not to. Ralph was positive Hugh knew more than he would ever dare to say. But they called each other by their first names and so would _never_ say anything about it. To explicitly discuss each other’s greatest fears would have been as horrible a violation of the social contract of public school life as ratting out an accomplice was in the mafia.

There were moments of dizzying terror when Ralph thought Spud might have noticed something-- not in Ralph’s manner, but in his own. Spud had the bad habit of saying exactly what he thought, which was not always what he meant, or what was the intelligent thing to say. Ralph’s influence had kept him from spouting off about how much he valued their friendship, but it would out itself in other ways. Spud always looked immediately for Ralph when scoring at cricket, or when he’d won a meet; he made a point of sitting by him or following him around; he was forever trying to save things from his tuck boxes that he knew Ralph (who had never received a tuck box) would like. He had moved on from his Celtic phase towards a full-fledged enthusiasm for ancient Greece and had developed a troubling tendency to protest that the _erastes_ only taught the _eromenos_ the things necessary to act like a citizen properly should.

“Don't tell me Mr. Jepson finally got into your head, Spuddy,” he said, and nearly winced. He'd always said “Odell” before.

Spud flushed in deep and sudden pleasure at the use of his nickname. “No, Lanyon, please. But it's- it's only that when I read it all, it makes rather a lot of sense to me. Jeepers-- Mr. Jepson, sorry, Lanyon-- can go on and on about the unspeakable vice of the Greeks, but it seems to _me_ that Plato’s ethical system is a hell of a lot better than Jeepers’s.”

“Almost anyone’s ethical system is a hell of a lot better than Mr. Jepson’s. But don't get too carried away, Spud.” The curse had come upon him, thought Ralph. There was no way to stop saying ‘Spud.’ The line had been crossed; it now meant to much to both of them to ever stop. “They're nice ideas but that's the point. They're only ideas. They don't exist anywhere.”

“They certainly do,” said Spud, with all the dogmatic indignation that particularly characterizes sixteen-year-olds. “Why, you've been- been jolly good about taking me under your wing and all. Teaching me how to act. And all that out of perfect altruism and friendship.”

“You really think that, Spud?” Ralph could not help but ask, taking in the fading flush, the look that bordered on adoration, the unconscious lean towards him. “For the Lord's sake, then, don't go about telling people I'm your _erastes_.”

“Jeepers wouldn’t understand,” said Spud, confidently.

“Most people wouldn’t,” Raph felt compelled to point out. “Sometimes, Spuddy, it seems to me that you’re lacking in some critical instinct of self-preservation. Your conversation can be disturbingly uninhibited.”

“Is it?” asked Spud, politely. “I ‘spect it has something to do with my psychology. Father dead and all.”

Ralph felt an overwhelming and irrational desire to protect, but he could not articulate to Spud just why it was necessary to take stock of your weaknesses and bleakly bend them to your will, until people had only suspicions, not certainties. Not, he thought, bemusedly, if he actually wished to protect Spud. As soon as Spud knew--

I am half-agony and half-hope, thought Ralph. (The Matron was an Austenite and had read aloud parts of _Persuasion_ the last time Ralph was in the sicker, for the naval link.) He wanted desperately to know Spud’s spontaneous reaction to knowing, and greatly feared the day when it would happen. People could surely get through their lives in happy ignorance. Spud could at least. He still had trouble articulating his real demands and expectations of others, let alone the ones he had for himself.

“Watch it, Spud,” Ralph said, not unaffectionately.

“I know, our house has had enough with Hazell,” said Spud, placidly. “I’m not proposing to jump on a table or anything. I just think Jeepers has a small and nasty mind.”

“Have you even read any Plato?” asked Ralph.

“No, mostly Homer.”

Ralph was able to shut the conversation down quickly by foisting on him _The Phaedrus_ and telling him to work on his rhetoric.

It was only when he was on the train to Cambridge that he realized that the myth of the charioteer had been dog-earred, and that the book would fall open to that page. Ralph had read it so many times, the spine had cracked. He told himself that the agonies of his anticipation and anxiety were all because of the interviews. He’d need a scholarship, after all, if he wanted to go to Cambridge.

But when it was all over, and he had been admitted to his prefered college, with a scholarship, and this fact had been toasted with several smuggled in bottles of rum, the sense of keyed up anticipation did not ebb. He found himself watching Spud as much as he had towards the beginning of the year. There was a quietness, an uncertainty to Spud that had not been there before.

And when Spud lingered after all the others had gone, Ralph felt hope eat like rust into his defenses. “Well now Spuddy,” said Ralph, slumping in his chair in a way that made it look impossible to get up, “you’re very quiet. Mourning my going already?”

“I know it’s what you wanted, but I thought....” Spud paused. “I don’t think I ever consciously realized you would be gone. This place won’t feel like home without you. It won’t-- I won’t...” He paused. “Must be the rum. I’m feeling an awful sap. But your friendship has been... well, it’s been....”

Ralph laughed. Oh God, he thought. I didn't do it. I didn't protect him. _Spud._ It was me, after all, wasn’t it, it was me and that bloody stupid book that made you realize. It was like the part in _Dorian Gray_ where Dorian had convinced himself of his reformed behavior, only to go up into the attic and see the continued corruption. He almost joked, ‘Oh I'm merely feeling Wilde,’ in response to Spud’s questioning look. “Spuddy, you’re a lightweight.”

“I only had a tot of the rum,” said Spud, saying 'tot' as if the French master had asked him to use a new vocab word in a sentence. “You’re leaving, soon, so it’s the only chance I’ll get to tell you how much... how much you’ve meant to me.”

“Thanks, Spuddy.” He forced himself to say, “I know the House’ll be in good hands.” He forced himself not to say any of the things he truly longed to, to give voice to the words that echoed in his head in the gray hours after dusk and before dawn.

It was a cold spring and the fire was lit in the prefect’s study. The firelight licked up the side of Spud’s neck and cheek. When he was eighteen, thought Ralph, Spud would be at the peak of his looks. Ralph felt an odd sense of mourning, already, that he would not there to daily drink it in.

“What is it Spud?” asked Ralph, softly.

Spud swung a bewildered, almost wide-eyed gaze from the fire over to Ralph. “I... I’ll miss you. That doesn’t seem enough to say. I’ll _miss_ you.”

There were two ways to answer him, thought Ralph, his mind on the white and black horses of the charioteer. He felt absurdly pulled in two directions, and in his stillness, in his ruthless argument with himself over how he should act, Spud went ahead and decided for them both.

Spud laughed, lightly. “I don’t-- I don’t half understand it myself. Next year seems awfully empty without you in it. I don’t know why.”

“Don’t you?” asked Ralph, willing himself to be still.

There came a look of fluctuating apprehension on Spud’s face.

“I,” said Spud, and swallowed.

Ralph could no more have stopped moving to the edge of his seat than he could have stopped the tide. “Yes, Spuddy?”

“I-- I don’t know,” he said, leaning towards Ralph, almost falling out of his chair. “I feel a most awful ass--”

“Spuddy,” said Ralph, almost unable to recognize his own voice. “You must stop worrying. Come here.” Spud hesitated, his confusion and his longing flickering across his face as the firelight. Ralph gentled his voice. “Let me show you why you’ll miss me.”

Spud fell into his arms as he liked to dive into the pool: at first as if overcoming a struggle, and then with a graceful, arcing surrender to forces greater than himself. There was such beauty in it, such trust, Ralph felt echos of the Plymouth Brethren rising up on all sides to damn him. But he kissed Spud anyways.

It was as chaste as he could bear to make it. He kept his hands lightly on Spud’s shoulders, pressed his closed lips to Spud’s. Spud accepted the kiss with a kind of frozen incredulity. He probably hadn’t ever been kissed before, thought Ralph, which shot his full throated pleasure to death and flung him into agonies of remorse. When he stopped, Spud, with a spontaneous, almost involuntary movement, rested his head on Ralph’s shoulder.

“Oh,” said Spud.

“Well,” said Ralph, forcing himself to speak with a sort of bleak courage, “now you see what I mean--”

“I--” Spud tilted his head back, looked up at Ralph as if dazed.

“What is it, Spud?” asked Ralph, feeling echos of coaching the duel in _Hamlet_. Ah, thought Ralph, that’s where I’ve seen him look like this before, like he wants desperately to prove he understood, when he didn’t. “D’you need me to show you again?”

“Yes, Lanyon, if you please,” said Spud.

Ralph could not help but oblige him. Spud was a quicker study this time. He kissed Ralph back with eager enthusiasm, gentling when Ralph managed a gruff, “Like this Spuddy,” his voice low and rough from gratified desire. _Spuddy_ , thought Ralph, in a dazed euphoria. _Spuddy._ Spud held him and kissed him as if he wished to disprove the idea that there might be any space between them. He slid entirely off his chair to Ralph’s lap, twined his arms about Ralph’s neck like ivy around an oak tree. When he at last gained the courage to run a hand up and into Ralph’s fine, light hair, Ralph could not help a soft noise, the precursor to a moan, and broke off the kiss lest he be tempted to lick his way into Spud’s mouth. For one glorious minute, all the world shrank to Spud-- the hand lightly combing through the hair at the nape of his neck, the crisp, nicely textured hair under his fingertips, the warm, agonizingly wonderful weight in his lap, the press of Spud’s inner thighs against the outside of his own. Harsh breathing crowded his ears, but whether it was his breath or Spud’s, he could not say. When he closed his eyes, Spud let a handful of Ralph’s fine, fair hair flow through his fingers like water.

“Gosh,” said Spud, dazedly. “I'm not used to being taller than you, Lanyon.”

“I think we might be of a height, eventually,” said Ralph, against Spud’s cheekbone.

He could feel Spud’s smile, rather than see it. “People don’t-- people like Jeepers, they don’t know, do they? That it’s like this.”

“No, Spuddy,” said Ralph, unable to keep the fondness from his tone. “Even I didn't know it could be like this.”

“But I do,” said Spud. “I do now.” And he folded Ralph in his arms and kissed him.


End file.
